{"id":3301,"date":"2008-03-04T10:29:34","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T10:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/03\/geologists-in-peril-and-liking-it\/"},"modified":"2008-03-04T10:29:34","modified_gmt":"2008-03-04T10:29:34","slug":"geologists-in-peril-and-liking-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/2008\/03\/geologists-in-peril-and-liking-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Geologists in peril – and liking it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

After linking to some spectacular photos taken from right in the path of an avalanche<\/a>, and a jealousy-inducing photo of himself standing right next to an oozing lava flow, Geotripper asks if geologists have a death wish<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I considered what happens when events like this happen to geologists. We run for a better look! A landslide, a volcanic eruption, an earthquake, it seems like we can’t resist; while others run away in a wild panic, I imagine many or most of us will be scrabbling for a camera and running towards whatever is going on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The closest I’ve ever got to a volcanic eruption is about 40 years (when I visited Pompeii on a school trip in the mid 90s), but I can think of several instances where my determination to plant my nose on the best exposure has put me in a somewhat precarious situation. On one such occasion during my undergraduate mapping project, I descended a few metres down a steep cliff face to examine a possible contact, and then found that I couldn’t safely climb back up again. The only way out was a descent down 25 metres’ worth of fairly sheer felsic lavas. Not fun, even if there were lots of lovely brambles at the bottom to break my fall. I was hardly alone amongst my cohort that summer, either – there was a running joke that it wasn’t a proper mapping project unless you’d had at least one near-death experience.
\nIf this is a tendency amongst geologists, I’m don’t think it’s either the result of us all being adrenalin junkies, or of us shifting into ‘absent-minded professor’ mode and being too focussed on the rocks to notice the danger. It’s more that our appreciation of the potential risks in a particular environment are counterbalanced by our strong desire to get to grips with the geology. Our subconscious is still screaming, “Fly, you fools!”, but we also have that other little, yet very insistent, voice saying, “Hmmm, this is interesting – and you’ll see it much better from a little bit closer…” For the most part, these are risks we choose<\/em> to take, because we consider the experience to be worth it. Indeed, the willingness to take risks that other people consider to be slightly mad seems to be part of human nature; it’s just that most people express the urge through bungee-jumping, or eating Fugu<\/a>, or hurling their car around blind corners at 100 miles an hour, rather than running towards an active volcano. And they call us<\/em> mad…
\nI’d be very interested to hear other people’s perspectives on this: what’s the most precarious situation you’ve got yourself embroiled in during fieldwork? And was it worth it?
\nUpdate<\/b>: Ron<\/a>, Kim<\/a>, Silver Fox<\/a> and The Lost Geologist<\/a> have offered up their tales of derring-do, whilst I think Mel<\/a> has found my next hiking destination<\/a>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After linking to some spectacular photos taken from right in the path of an avalanche, and a jealousy-inducing photo of himself standing right next to an oozing lava flow, Geotripper asks if geologists have a death wish: I considered what … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fieldwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/all-geo.org\/highlyallochthonous\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}